ASCENT Annual Review Poster Presenters
Due to the coronavirus pandemic this year, the ASCENT Annual review was held for the first time in a virtual format over WebEx. The Annual Review held annually each year, updates all of the sponsor companies on the Centers' research progress and goals for the next year. This year the review took place Aug 11-13, and had 320 attendees. The agenda included 30 Faculty, Industry and Student presentations along with 62 Student and Postdoc virtual posters. Notre Dame's Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. Patricia "Trish" Culligan provided a warm welcome to all of the attendees.
ASCENT Center Director, Suman Datta and Associate director, Sayeef Salahuddin provided the following note in the review program on behalf of the entire ASCENT Team:
"The core strength of a research center starts with its student researchers. We are proud of our research team within ASCENT and appreciate the long hours of perseverance and creativity they consistently bring to the table. A critical aspect of our annual review each year is the inspiration and encouragement that our graduate students and postdocs receive through direct interaction with the ASCENT industry representatives and professors from other institutions. The global pandemic of 2020 has affected all of us in some way and forced us to change many of our “normal” ways of doing things. ASCENT’s annual review is no exception. While we cannot meet face-to- face and enjoy our usual in-person interactions, ASCENT’s virtual review will include the same technical richness and rigor that we have come to expect year after year. The poster sessions this year will present the technical progress of the past year. The results will be disseminated via pre-recorded video clips, followed by live panel sessions where the students serve as panelists and the PIs act as moderators. This year we ask for your help to attend the student sessions and post your questions online during one of the live virtual sessions. Please reach out to our graduate students and postdocs through email and schedule virtual meetings after the annual review to continue technical discussions and encourage them in their research."
Congratulations go to the following 6 ASCENT students for receiving recognition for the review's "Best poster awards". The awards were based on technical content, visual presentation, and alignment with the Center vision. They were selected by SRC liaison members of each of the sponsor companies during the five poster sessions.
Theme 1 • Vertical CMOS
Poster 2.4 Task .008, “Enhancement of selective Ru ALD by vapor-phase passivation” Michael Breeden, Victor Wang, Francis Yu, Scott Ueda, and Andrew Kummel.
Theme 2 • Beyond CMOS
Poster 5.1 Task .015, “High spin-orbit torque efficiency at room temperature in an all-oxide epitaxial La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/SrIrO3 system” Xiaoxi Huang, Shehrin Sayed, Joseph Mittelstaedt, Saba Karimeddiny, Lucas Caretta, Sandhya Susarla, Hongrui Zhang, Tanay Gosavi, Sayeef Salahuddin, Daniel C. Ralph, and R. Ramesh.
Theme 3 • Heterogeneous Integration Fabric
Theme 3(a) Task. 033, “Design and demonstration of embedded toroidal inductors for 48V-to-1V using a novel inductor efficiency metric” Claudio Alvarez, Prahalad Murali, and Madhavan Swaminathan.
Theme 3(b) Task .055, "Thermal Management for Heterogeneous Integration Fabric" Ujash Shah, Randall Irwin, Timothy S. Fisher, and Subramanian S. Iyer.
Theme 4 • Merged Logic Memory Fabric
Poster 14.4 Task .063, “Hardware-accelerated restricted Boltzmann machines for difficult problems” Saavan Patel and Sayeef Salahuddin.